Forever This Way
by CrazyCabernet
Summary: The customary first story for every Titanic fic author: Jack makes it out of the water and lives. I wasn't sure about what to rate it, so just to be safe... XP
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Hey, guys! I've never written for _Titanic _before, but I saw the movie in 3D with my mom when it was re-released in April and then I started obsessively looking things up about both the movie and the actual sinking, and then I finally just said to myself, "It's gonna happen sooner or later, so just do it already!" And so I picked up my pen and started writing.**

**I know that April is already long-over, but it took my awhile to decide whether or not I was actually going to go through with posting this on here, but then I finally decided today that yes, I was. I've reached a point in the notebook I wrote it in where it might end, it might not...I'm still kind of trying to figure out how to proceed with it, or if I should proceed at all.**

**Like most people whose _Titanic _stories I've read, I looked up the script for this. Obviously, since Jack lives in this, it kind of veers off-script towards the end of the chapter, and I've also altered a couple of Jack's lines, one so that it fits the way I remember him saying it in the movie, and one because for some reason, my brain has an easier time hearing him say it a bit differently than he actually did. I dunno what the heck the heck that's about, you'd have to ask my brain, but...*shrugs*  
**

* * *

Rose gripped Jack's hands desperately, putting every remaining ounce of her strength into helping him pull himself up onto the door she was already on top of. Once he was on safely and they'd managed to balance it out as much as they could, Jack put his arms around Rose as they lay there together, teeth chattering violently.

"The boats will c-come back for us, Rose," Jack said, tightening his grip on her to give them both as much warmth as possible. "Hold on just a-a little l-longer. They had to r-row away because of th-the suction, but n-now they'll be coming b-back." Rose nodded, drawing comfort from his voice. "Thank G-G-God for you, Jack," she said.

All around them, people screamed and flailed, desperately trying to catch the attention of someone in a boat. From his own piece of debris several feet away, Officer Wilde started blowing his whistle, hoping it would be louder and carry farther than everyone's cries and shouts.

Jack and Rose seemed to be the only ones not making any sound at all. They just lay there together on their little raft, huddled close for warmth. Jack had squeezed the water out of Rose's pink coat and tucked it around their legs and now, he was rubbing her arms in an attempt to create heat with the barely-there friction.

After awhile, they turned onto their backs and gazed silently up at the stars as the pleas for help became softer, growing more and more infrequent and the water turned back into a mill pond, eventually becoming a vast, endless black mirror that reflected the stars in its glassy, eerily calm surface.

"It's getting quiet," Rose whispered. Jack's dark blue lips looked pitch black against the chalky paleness that his face had become. "Just a few more minutes," he whispered back. "It'll take them a little while to get the boats organized...That's all..."

But they both knew that wasn't the case; those boats weren't coming back any time soon, or any other time for that matter.

Over Jack's shoulder, Rose could see Wilde; He was slumped over whatever it was he'd managed to grab onto, pale and unmoving. With his eyes closed, he looked peaceful enough that he could have been asleep. But Rose knew the truth. This was a slumber that he would never emerge from.

His voice somewhat stronger, Jack blurted out suddenly, "I dunno about you, Rosie, but once we're in New York, I intend to write a very strongly worded letter to White Star about this whole ordeal!" She laughed weakly, finding his light blue eyes in the dim light.

"I love you, Jack..."

He gripped her hands in both of his as firmly as he could.

"Don't do that, Rosie."

He shook his head, looking directly into her eyes.

"No...Don't say your goodbyes yet, Rose. Don't you give up. Don't do it."  
"I'm so cold..."  
"You're going to get out of this...You're going to go on, and you're going to make lots of babies and watch them grow up, and you're going to die an old, old lady, warm in your bed. Not here. Not this night. Do you understand me?"

"I can't feel my body..."  
"Rose, listen to me. Listen. Winning that ticket was the best thing that ever happened to me."

By that point, he was having trouble getting the breath needed in order to speak, but he was determined to finish.

"It brought me to you. And I'm thankful, Rose...I'm thankful..."

His voice was barely over a whisper by then. It trembled in the cold that was slowly creeping towards his heart, but his eyes never wavered or faltered as he continued.

"You must do me this honor...promise me you will survive...that you will never give up...no matter what happens...no matter how hopeless...promise me now, and never let go of that promise."  
"I promise."

"Never let go."  
"I promise...I will never let go, Jack...I'll never let go..."

The only sound was the lapping of the water as they lay there with their foreheads touching softly. It felt as if centuries had passed, and they lay absolutely still as they floated in an emptiness of starry black nothing. They stared up at the canopy of stars above them, feeling oddly peaceful as the long sleep began to claim them.

They were as pale as the lifeless cadavers around them, floating in a void. They were both bordering on a semi-hallucinatory state, both of them fully aware that they were dying. Still, they sang the song that was so special to both of them, though their lips barely moved and hardly any sound came out. It was just those two lines, over and over again:

_"Come, Josephine, in my flying machine;  
Going up she goes...Up she goes..."_

A light streaked across the heavens, and they both thought it was a shooting star. Rose's breathing was shallow and she was nearly motionless, her glassy eyes tracking the stars from one horizon to the other and then back again. Her hair, like Jack's, was dusted with crystals of icy frost.

Jack, meanwhile, wasn't much better off, but instead of keeping tabs on the stars, he kept his eyes primarily on Rose, glancing up every now and then to check for any signs of movement. Some small part of his brain had somehow managed to continue working at least semi-normally, so he was a bit more aware of things than she was.

So as soon as he saw a boat silhouetted against the stars and heard faint voices calling out, it clicked together suddenly that the so-called shooting star couldn't _actually _have been a shooting star because it had been much too bright.

Which meant that it must have been a torch beam.

His eyes were nearly closed, but as soon as he realized what was going on, they snapped open and he pushed himself into the water, being careful not to bring Rose in with him as he did so.

"Jack...?"  
"I can see a boat, Rosie, it's gonna be okay! I promise!"

She weakly pushed herself up onto her elbows and watched past half-closed eyelids as Jack swam over to Officer Wilde's pale corpse, yanking the whistle from his lips. The cord it was on snapped when he yanked on it again, and as soon as it was free from Wilde's neck, Jack turned and went directly back to where Rose was waiting.

With all the air he had in his lungs at that moment, Jack blew on the whistle over and over, refusing to stop until the boat had reached them. The entire time, he gripped Rose's hands tightly and didn't let go. They locked eyes and Rose smiled weakly.

They really were going to be okay.

* * *

**AN: Well, that concludes the first chapter, folks, I hope you've enjoyed it so far! Second chapter should be up today, if not, it'll definitely be here tomorrow.**

**Disclaimer: The only claim I have to any of these characters is the Jack & Rose that are in my Sims 3 game. And even they don't really count for anything. Soooo, really, it all belongs to James Cameron. Soooo there. I own nothing and deny everything. XD  
**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: This one's pretty short, but it does what I need it to do for the story, and that's the important part. I do apologize for the shortness of it, though.**

**Disclaimer: Uh...just a second...*checks something* Nope, still not mine!  
**

* * *

Fifteen hundred people. Twenty boats. In the end, only one turned back.

_One._

And only six people were rescued, including Jack and his Rosie.

Six. Out of _one thousand five hundred _innocent souls.

Seven hundred survived. And once their boats were drifting aimlessly, all seven hundred had nothing at all to do...except wait.

Wait to die...  
...Wait to live...  
...Wait for an absolution that would never come.

And in the single unique case of Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater, wait to finally leave that damned boat, even if it wasn't the same one, and get back to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Real Hot Dog so that they could start over fresh together.

So they could go to the pier at Santa Monica and drink cheap beer and ride the roller coaster until they threw up and ride horses right through the surf like real cowboys with one leg on each side of the horse, none of that side-saddle nonsense.

During their time in the small boats, Jack and Rose didn't speak much unless absolutely necessary, which, given the situation, was rare. They didn't really speak to each other much, either. They didn't need to in order to understand one another. All it too was for Jack to hold her, or for them to look at each other's faces, or some other small thing like that.

In the gray hours of the morning of April fifteenth, nineteen-twelve, the survivors were alerted to something coming towards them when one of the few lucky men to get in a lifeboat suddenly stood up, throwing his fists into the air with a cry of "HAIL MARY!" in a thick Irish accent.

Jack opened his eyes and Rose lifted her head from his chest, both of them woken up by the cheers that went up all around them in response to the sight that was in front of them:

_Carpathia._

Jack and Rose remained sitting, and they did not cheer with the rest of the survivors. But there was a spark in Jack's eyes as he kissed Rose, and it relieved her to see it again after its absence that felt an eternity to her.

It was a spark of hope.

* * *

**AN: You see that box down there? The one with a button that says "Submit Review" right underneath it? It's calling to you. It says, "Pleeeease! Come and type something in me! I'm so sad and lonely! Please come be my frieeend!" **

**Obey the box. IT TOOK CAL'S GUN FROM HIM AND IT KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE! OBEY THE BOX OR ELSE!  
**


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: I had to change a few things in this chapter because I decided to change something else later on, and it wouldn't have worked if I kept what I had for this chapter. BY THE WAY...I have someone I want to introduce you to at the end of the chapter... ;)**

**Disclaimer: Um...Well...Let's see...NOPE, still belongs to James Cameron!**

* * *

Rose felt as if she were outside of both time and herself as she came onto _Carpathia, _barely able to stand, but with a sense of security to feel Jack's arm around her, helping keep her steady. He'd told her before the first _Titanic _survivor was even on board that he would be by her side the entire time, and he stayed true to his word through everything they had to go through before finally getting to rest.

That afternoon, Cal showed up in search of Rose, ignoring the officer who told him he probably wouldn't find any of "his people" in the third class area. Rose and Jack hid their faces with the blankets they'd been given as soon as they stepped foot off the lifeboat.

Cal didn't give either of them a second glance as he turned and left.

When one of the officers taking down names for the survivor list approached them, Rose did something completely unexpected.

"Excuse me, may I take your names down please?"  
"Jack Dawson and-"

"Rose Dawson," she said, looking up at the man suddenly with wide eyes. He wrote them down on the clipboard in his hands, then smiled and nodded politely to them. "Thank you very much," he said, "and welcome aboard _Carpathia, _Mr. and Mrs. Dawson."

Jack stared at her after the man left, too surprised to speak. She studied him for a few moments, gently tracing his jaw with her fingers. "Rose DeWitt Bukater died when Cal started shooting at us, Jack," she said finally, her voice quiet so that only he could hear it. "Rose Dawson was born out on that door in the middle of the Atlantic"

Jack smiled, taking her face between his hands and pressing his forehead to hers softly, much as he had on their flotsam-raft. He looked directly into her eyes as he spoke. "Rose whatever-your-middle-name-is..." She laughed, and the sound made his heart soar.

"You have just made me so incredibly happy. The only thing that could possibly make this any better is if we were in Santa Monica right now."  
"Drinking cheap beer?" she asked half-teasingly.

"And riding the roller coaster until we throw up, yes, of course," he replied, closing the small distance between them. "By the way," she said when they pulled apart for air. Rose looked up at him past her long, thick eyelashes as she smirked a bit playfully before continuing.

"It's Angela."  
"What is?"  
"My middle name. It's Angela."

He silently mouthed out her full name to himself; _Rose Angela Dawson. _Since he was still in a daze after everything they'd been through, it took a moment for his mind to fully comprehend all three words, but once it had, Jack smiled and said them again, but this time out loud; "Rose Angela Dawson."

She returned his smile as he twined their fingers together and softly kissed each of her knuckles before kissing her lips. Almost immediately after they separated, they heard a voice say, "Rose? Jack? Is that you?"

They turned to find that Molly Brown was watching them with wide eyes. As soon as she could see their faces clearly, she said, "My god." Before either of them could even blink, Molly was beside them, hugging them both tightly, and they hugged her right back."

"God, Rosie...When your mother told me what happened and why you ran off so quick, why I..." She shook her head. "I thought for sure that ya'll'd both drowned below deck or somethin'. I was prayin' for both of ya the entire time we were stuck in those lifeboats. Just kept lookin' up at the stars and thinkin' to myself, 'Dear Lord, if they somehow managed to survive by some miracle or somethin', please just let them be safe and together.'"

She was rambling somewhat, but neither Jack or Rose seemed to really mind; they were just as happy to see her as she was to see them. When Molly stopped to catch her breath, though, Rose took the chance to tell her something important.

"Molly, you should know that Rose DeWitt Bukater is among the victims claimed by _Titanic," _she said. Molly was, of course, extremely confused by this. "Rosie, I don't...You're talkin' nonsense, honey, you're still alive. The cold musta messed with your head or somethin', 'cause you're-"

"What I meant," Rose interrupted, gently taking Molly's hands in her own, "is simply that my name is not DeWitt Bukater anymore. I'm a different girl now, Molly, and I am more _alive _than ever thanks to Jack!"

"But...If your last name isn't-"  
"Molly," Jack said, "allow me to introduce Miss Rose Dawson. Rosie, this is my good friend Mrs. Margaret Brown, more commonly known as Molly."

For the first time since either of them had met her, Molly Brown, the chatterbox of a woman who always had an opinion about everything and rarely ever shut up once given the chance speak freely, was speechless.

She looked at Rose. Then Jack. Then Rose, then Jack, then Rose, then Jack, jaw on the floor the whole time. Jack laughed, finally breaking the silence between them, and Molly suddenly remembered how to blink. She shook herself out of the weird stupor she'd gotten stuck in and said, "Jack Dawson, you and your girlfriend have got some real serious explainin' to do right now, ya hear?"

Jack nodded as he put his arm around Rose's waist, drawing her a bit closer against himself. "Yes, ma'am," he said, grinning cockily.

On the outside, he just looked like a regular 20-year-old guy from steerage. (Of course, out of all the ones with girls, he was with the most beautiful, but aside from that, he didn't have anything that made him stand out in any way.)

On the inside, though, he was so thrilled to hear Rose referred to as his girlfriend that if he wasn't trying to avoid being recognized by any of the first class survivors, he would have swept Rose off her feet and taken her to the bow of the ship to fly again before taking her to the stars and back.

* * *

**AN: OKAY, so I told you had someone to introduce you to, and so I plan on doing just that! JOJO, GET OUT HERE!**

**Jojo: I'M BUSY!  
**

**Me: *drags her in by the ear*  
**

**Jojo: OW, OW, OW, OW, WHAT GIVES?  
**

**Me: Stay, puppy! Okay, everyone! This is one of my more recent OCs. Her name is Josephine, but she goes by Jojo. She's Jack and Rose's great-granddaughter. She's got Jack's eyes and artistic talent with Rose's hair, only it's wavy instead of curly and it's a lighter shade of red with thin blond streaks. ANYWAY, Jojo, tell the people about yourself!  
**

**Jojo: *sigh* I'm 17, I left home at an early age, I live in Santa Monica, I like to draw in my free time, I work part-time as a waitress at a place called Cora's Coffee Shoppe, and I do competitive dance. My partner's name is Conner and our trainers' names are Lizzie and Logan and the three of them are my best friends. Oh, and Maggie annoys me.  
**

**Me: HEY! Oh, and she sees ghosts. Titanic's victims to be specific. Jack follows her around everywhere she goes. He's like her mentor and guardian, sorta.  
**

**Jojo: And lately he's been hovering over my shoulder every single time I break out my art supplies just so he can pester me about my shading. DAMMIT, JACK, FOR THE LAST TIME, THEY'RE MY DRAWINGS, I'LL DECIDE HOW THE SHADING SHOULD LOOK!  
**

**Me: ...Anyway, I made a Facebook page for her, which I'll put a link to on my profile for anyone who has an FB account and is interested in checking it out. She's pretty awesome!  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: I...have touched part of _Titanic_'s hull. An _actual, real live _piece of the hull that they salvaged from the wreck site. And this summer, I am going to see the grave of a survivor who settled in El Paso, possibly even two.**

**But I _touched her hull._**

**I _touched it._  
**

* * *

He did get the chance to take her to the stars a second time; just not right as the urge struck. They told Molly everything, from the handcuffs and axe, to getting shot at by Cal, to being chased through the rapidly flooding ship by Lovejoy, to laying on the makeshift raft and slowly singing themselves closer and closer to an endless sleep in each other's arms.

The image put tears in Molly's eyes.

She told them that she'd tried to get the officer in charge of her lifeboat to go back, but he'd refused, and the other women had just sat there when she'd turned to them for back up. After a few moments of nobody saying anything, Jack perked up a bit as an idea suddenly popped into his head. Turning to Molly, he said, "Molly, how'd you like to go to a real party?" Rose grinned knowingly, instantly catching on. So they took her down below and quickly figured out where to go—it wasn't hard once they heard the sounds carrying down the halls. From there, it was a simple matter of following their ears.  
Jack had already checked the survivor list for Tommy and Fabrizio, but neither one had been there. One of the ship officers had told him it was possible their names just hadn't been taken down yet and that he should come back later to check again. He'd gone back a few more times after that, but neither name ever appeared, so he finally told himself that he would just have to accept that they were both gone and work on finding a way of coping and coming to terms with it. But when they got down to the place where the steerage survivors were mourning their loved ones the only way they knew how—by celebrating the lives of those lost rather than crying about their deaths—and rejoicing that they had made it out, Jack saw a familiar face sitting at the bar, laughing at something that someone had said.

"Casey!"

Casey Ryan, Tommy's brother, turned. When he saw Jack heading towards him with a huge smile on his face, Casey broke out into his own enormous grin.

"Jackie boy!"

He and Jack threw their arms around each other while Rose and Molly watched with smiles on their faces, glad to see that at least one of Jack's friends was safe and alive. "Thank God you're alright, I thought you'd drowned behind those damned gates!" Jack said, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of the party. "Are ye daft, lad?! I still ain't been to Tir N'an Og, I can't die yet!" Casey said. After Jack introduced him to Rose and Molly, things took off. Molly didn't hold back and fit right in with the crowd. Jack let her dance with Rose at one point while he stopped to catch his breath. "So tell me," Casey said, resting his elbow on Jack's shoulder as he took a gulp of Irish beer.

"Exactly how many angels flew out yer arse, eh?"  
Jack laughed loudly. "About eight, I think!" he replied. "I honestly didn't pay much attention while I was counting, Rose's face was about five inches from mine when they came out, so I was a bit distracted." Casey laughed as he shook his head, face flushed from heat and alcohol. Soon enough, he found a pretty girl about his own age with a very rich, heavy Irish accent who said she was from a town just outside of Dublin. Áine distracted him almost too easily without even trying.

The party went on until late in the night, and Rose eventually fell back against Jack's chest, deliberately being overdramatic in doing so. He gladly caught her, dipping her down low as if they were waltzing.

"'Eyes, look your last,'" he said in her ear, "'arms, take your last embrace; and lips, O you, the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss.'" And he kissed her deeply. "'O true apothecary: they drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss, I die.'"

Rose smiled. "You know Shakespeare," she said. Jack shook his head, grinning sheepishly. "Only the one," he told her. "I've never had a chance to read the others I'm interested in." He twirled her around, then pressed himself close to her again and whispered one of Juliet's lines, his new favorite in the entire play. "'That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'" _His_ Rose smiled as he softly nuzzled the hollow of her jaw.

"Take me to the stars, Jack."  
"To the stars, my lady."

They slipped away and found their room with no problem. One of the men helping survivors get organized had been assigning them rooms, and Jack had repeated their number to himself over and over again in his head until he had it completely memorized. It wasn't first class, of course, but it wasn't steerage with bunkbeds, either. The torn and soaked dress that Rose had been wearing when they were rescued still looked nice enough that she had unintentionally passed herself off as being from second class, and it was because of this that they had been assigned as quaint second class room just a little ways below the main deck.

Thankfully, the bed was big enough for two, so there wouldn't be any floor-sleeping for either of them, which was something Jack had been making occasional jokes to her about all day, a one point even going so far as to pretend to start whining about it while they were eating lunch with Molly, who shut him up without even trying when she laughed and said that if she weren't looking right at him, the falsetto he was reaching might make him pass as an actual toddler.

At some point during the day, while living arrangements were being made and organized for the survivors, somebody had apparantly gone around to the rooms that were being set aside for _Titanic_'s former passengers and cleaned up a bit, even being kind enought to leave neatly folded little piles of fresh, dry clothes on each of the beds. They knew this because when Jack unlocked the door and Rose followed him in, one of the first things they noticed was the two stacks of folded close sitting beside each other on the foot of the bed. Rose tossed her coat onto the floor carelessly while Jack moved the dry clothes to the loveseat that was against the rooms back wall.

She smiled at him, but said nothing as he went to her and put his arms around his waist, her own arms moving to wrap around his neck. "To the stars, Jack," she whispered in his ear, gently tugging the front of his shirt to bring him down onto the bed with her. He kissed her forehead. "To the stars and beyond the burning moon," he agreed. So that's exactly where he took her.

And the moon really _was_ on fire, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Here's the next chapter for the anniversary. I would've posted earlier, but I was watching the movie, and then I had to at least attempt to settle my emotions down after subjecting them to that, so... n_n"**

**Anyway, here it is, and I'm gonna try to have the next chapter up before I go to bed tonight, but no promises, 'cause I'm turning in early because I'm sick. I'll start right after I get outta the shower I'm about to go take, though, I promise. This was originally two separate chapters, but I mushed them into one because they seem to make more sense that way. I'll shut up now.**

Disclaimer: I AM NOT JAMES CAMERON. MY EGO IS A PERFECTLY HEALTHY SIZE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. XD

**—Maggie**

* * *

After they got back to Earth, they just lay there in each other's arms. Jack held Rose's gaze, neither one making any sound except for the occasional sweet nothings they whispered to one another every so often in soft voices, as if afraid that to speak too loudly would break the spell they had fallen under. Then Jack whispered something without really thinking about it.

"Marry me, Rosie."

She studied his face to see if he was serious, then realized he was. "Jack...are you sure that's what you want?"  
"I've never been more sure about anything in my life. I love you and I want to be with you forever. I want to be able to lay next to you like this every night and wake up every morning with you in my arms. I want you to be the last thing I see before I close my eyes and fall asleep, and the first thing I see when I open them the next day. You already took my last name, so why not make it official?"

"How soon do you have in mind?"  
"Whenever you want, just as long as it's before we dock. I want to be able to walk off this boat married to you, Rose. It would mean everything to me to have that happen. More than all the diamond necklaces in the world, and it would more than make up for the sentimental value of all the drawings I lost when _Titanic _went down. Please, Rosie...Do me this honor, please...It doesn't have to be a lot of people if you don't want. It could just be us, the preacher, and Molly could be the witness, maybe Casey. Please say yes, Rose...please say you'll marry me, please..."

She didn't answer right away. He was afraid her hesitance meant she would say no, and he tried to brace himself for disappointment as best he could. "Jack," she said finally. "Jack whatever-your-middle-name-is Dawson, you are babbling endlessly like a mindless fool."  
"I can feel a huge 'but' coming on."

"But..."  
"Called it!"

She smiled and kissed him, then pulled back and looked into his eyes. "I love you, too, Jack."  
"...So...Is that a yes?"  
"It's a yes."

Jack was speechless with shock and joy, and Rose giggled at the expression on his face. When he finally found his voice again, he sat up and put his hands on either side of her face. "Rose...Rose, Rose, Rose, my sweet, beautiful Rosie...You have just made me _the _happiest man alive on this entire Goddamn planet. I'd marry you right this very minute if I could, Rose, I love you so damn much."

He was experienceing so many different emotions at the same time in that one single moment; love, desire, passion, lust, longing, and hundreds more. He couldn't even put names to some of them, and it felt as his heart would burst from how overwheling it was. He'd never felt so many things all at once before in his life, and it was both strange and wonderful for him now that it was happening for the first time. Looking into her eyes as they broke their kiss for air, he somehow knew—perhaps by whatever instinct had allowed them to communicate without speech in the lifeboat—that Rose felt the same and was going through it all, as well.

Hardly aware of what they were doing, the couple went to the stars for a second time that night. "By the way," Jack whispered as they began drifting to sleep, "it's Nicholas."  
"What is?" Rose murmured against his chest. "My middle name," he replied. "It's Nicholas." She smiled as he kissed her forehead and they drifted into a peaceful sleep.

They wasted almost no time, and when _Carpathia _docked in New Tork, they stood on the deck, not caring that they were getting soaked by the pouring rain, and stared up at the Satue of Liberty as one of the few married couples who had either found each other again through the survivor list, or managed to somehow stay together by some miracle.

For Jack and Rose Dawson, it had been a miracle combined with their own sheer determination.

Rose covered her hair with a blanket as they stepped onto the plank that would let them off the boat. By that point, standing out was the last thing either of them wanted to do, and with such a bright and unique color, there was a bigger chance of that happening, so she did the logical thing and hid it from sight.

Over thirty thousand people waited to greet the _Titanic _survivors, including the stampede of reporters and photographers, which was six feet deep at the foot of the gangways, with others perched on top of cars and trucks. They jostled to get close to the surviovors, tugging sleeves and shouting questions over each other's heads. There were several hundred policemen present trying to keep the crowd back and not quite succeeding all the way, despite giving their best efforts. There was an immigration officer at the end of the gangways asking for names, and this time, Jack answered for both of them.

"Names please, sir."  
"Jack and Rose Dawson."  
"Thank you. Please head to the holding area over there for processing."

"Jack," Rose said as they moved foward with the crowd of dazed immigrants, "we're both American. Why are the sending us for processing?" Jack leaned over a bit to get closer to Rose's ear so she would be able to hear him. "Probably because—"

_BOOM!_

Several people flinched in surprise at the blinding glare of a photographer's magnesium flash. Then a sudden commotion broke out as a pair of men broke through the cordon and ran to embrace an older woman who was among the survivors. She cried out in joy, and flashes exploded as the reporters swarmed like bees towards the emotional scene, feeding off it like ants on a picnic. Seeing their chance, Jack grabbed Rose's hand, using the confusion to an advantage as he led her away from the crowd, weaving in and out of the throngs. They moved with purpose, and nobody questioned them with all the chaos going on everywhere.

They managed to escape, finally, and once they were out of the crowd, they slowed down a bit before finally coming to a complete stop and looking around. "Now which way?" Rose asked. Jack looked at their options; keep going down the dock, or turn left and head towards the first few buildings on the street. Finally, he just pulled a dime out of his pocket. Showing it to Rose, he said, "Heads we go straight, tails we make a left."  
"Alright," she said.

He flicked it into the air, then caught it and smacked it onto the back of his hand. He nodded. "Left it is, then," he said. They took each other's hands again, and for the first time in what felt like years, their feet touched hard, solid, firm ground.

"I never want to set foot on another boat again for as long as I live."  
"Sounds like a plan to me. I'd rather stand on the edge of an active volcano."

Rose laughed. Thankfully, they wouldn't need a boat to get where they were going. Just a train, their own feet, and some determination. They already had two of those things. Now they just need to take care of the train part, which wouldn't have been a problem if Jack still had his art supplies. Unfortunately, however, all the paper, conte crayons, and everything else were at the bottom of the ocean along with his portfolio, which was still locked in Cal's safe in Rose's stateroom closet.

Remembering the safe made Rose suddenly notice that she was still wearing Cal's jacket. She made a face and yanked it off. As she was about to throw it into a tree, Jack caught her by the wrist suddenly. "There might be something in the pockets we can use," he said. Rose looked at it again. "Maybe..." she said, feeling around in one of them. Her fingers closed around a cold, hard object, and she frowned in confusion. They both gasped when she pulled it out.

"The Heart of the Ocean..."

Jack took it from her palm, almost seeming afraid of touching it, as if it would burn his hand. "I can't believe he was so stupid and careless," Rose said, watching as Jack turned it around hin his hands over and over again. "What should we do with it?" he asked. "Sell it?" Rose shook her head in response to this. "No," she said, "then he might be able to track us down. It would be an instant give away that I survived."

"So, what? Just...keep it?"  
"Until we can figure something else out, I don't see any other choice."

Jack nodded and slipped the necklace into his pocket. "Let's see if he left us anything else..."  
As it turns out, there was a huge wad of cash in the other pocket, still a bit damp from when Rose had been in the water.

"My God, Jack...this is a thousand dollars just by itself!"  
Jack's eyes were saucers on his face. "That's enough money to get tickets to Santa Monica and still have some left over! Hell, we could go all the way to Mexico or Canada with this if we wanted!"  
"Then what are we waiting for, let's go find the train station!"

"WATCH OUT, SANTA MONICA! JACK DAWSON IS COMIN' BACK! WOO!"

Both feet were still on the ground, but for the second time in the past week, Jack Dawson felt like the king of the world with only the location and reasons being different. And this time, he had a beautiful queen beside him.

* * *

**AN: I'll go take that shower so I can get to work on the next on ASAP!  
**


End file.
